These original baronies expanded into a round hundred by the fifteenth century, and the list of them contains the ancestral names of the Breton nobility.
Henry II. of England dealt severely with Brittany, but his son Geoffrey married Constance, the daughter of Duke Conan IV., and this made the condition of the province more tolerable.
The first step toward the union of Brittany with the kingdom of France came when--through the intrigues of Philip Augustus--the daughter of Geoffrey Plantagenet married Pierre Mauclerc, Count of Dreux, and a prince of the blood royal of France. Joan of Penthièvre also married the Count of Blois, another lieutenant of the King of France.
[Illustration: <u>_Device of Anne of Brittany_</u>]
The war of succession in Brittany between the ducal houses of Blois and Montfort was, up to the fourteenth century, the principal event of the province's early history. The Montforts achieved final victory at Auray in 1364. Upon the death of Francis II., his daughter Anne, the chief figure in all Breton history, so far as existing memorials of her life are concerned, became duchess.
[Illustration: <u>_Anne of Brittany_</u>]
In 1491, she married Charles VIII. of France, and eight years later his successor, Louis XII. The daughter of this last marriage, the Princess Claude of France, married the Duke of Angoulême, afterward Francis the First, and the fortunes of Brittany and France were thenceforth indissolubly allied, for, upon becoming Queen Claude of France, the inheritor of Brittany ceded the province to her royal spouse and his descendants in perpetuity. Queen Claude died in 1524, which event for ever assured France of this province,--the most beautiful gem in the royal crown. The union of Brittany and France was celebrated with much pomp in 1532.
The ancient county or duchy of Bretagne was bordered on the east by Anjou and Maine, on the west by the Atlantic, on the north by the British Channel and Normandy, and on the south by Poitou. The province had two territorial divisions, Upper and Lower, and Rennes was the parliamentary capital.
Upper Brittany comprised the five episcopal dioceses of Dol, Nantes, Rennes, Saint-Brieuc, and St. Malo, and Lower Brittany counted four similar divisions, Quimper, St. Pol de Léon, Tréguier, and Vannes. Thus the political divisions of a former day corresponded exactly with those of the Church.